[The] story of an evil child is venerable and [William Trevor] brings to his handling of it few approaches that are new. But he does his work with dignity and gives us the best fruits of his talent until almost the end of The Children of Dynmouth. He fashions a character out of the dubious clichés of the age, puts breath in his lungs and blood in his veins, and moulds him into the monstrous Timothy Gedge, abandoned by his father, ignored by his mother and older sister, virtually companionless except for the television set that he watches continually. Timothy hatches a plan to lift himself above his ordinary existence. (p. 321)

Flannery O'Connor said that we are accustomed to the face of evil, and this is largely true, I think, but Gedge is an exception. He horrifies us by his youthful competence in the art of destroying...